


empty

by altilis



Series: careful, ren. [9]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Painplay, Post-Canon, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 19:58:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6920959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altilis/pseuds/altilis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo isn't the only one who takes what he shouldn't have. (He didn't even know he could lose this.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	empty

“Trying to protect her again, uncle?” Kylo’s voices echos through the dimly lit cavern, the bright red of his lightsaber reflecting off glistening stalagmites and the rippling water. Twenty meters lie between them: Kylo, alone, on one grey gravel shore of an underground lake and Rey and Luke on the other, their back to a fork in the tunnel. Rey nurses a wound to her side and a bloody lip, small recompense for their last fight, but also holds a pyramid stone at her other hip. Luke stands tall between them, breathing labored from when he pulled down the low suspension bridge that connected the two sides of the lake.

He’ll have to forfeit the holocron this time, Kylo admits. But there are bigger prizes to be won.

“You’re done for today,” Luke calls to him over the lake in that damnable calm of his, a familiar phrase that stokes Kylo’s longest-held rage. “We’ll be gone by the time you swim over.” 

The ceiling’s too low to jump the distance, Kylo agrees. Which is why he won’t jump. Instead, he takes a deep breath, closing his eyes and focusing on the dampness of the cave, on the little sound of the water breaking on the shore, and then he opens his eyes and steps out. 

The water hisses beneath his feet, but holds.

Another step, and another, the water rippling out from his footsteps but holding his weight, and then he breaks out into a full run, the tip of his lightsaber dragging through the water and sending a great cloud of steam billowing behind him.

“Go,” Luke mouths to Rey, his voice swallowed up by the vaporisation ringing through the cave. Rey protests, and Luke roars the command again—“ _GO!_ ”—loud enough that Kylo hears it, too. Rey grits her teeth and takes off down the tunnel towards the cave entrance. Luke stands stalwart, wrapped in his brown robe and completely unarmed. 

He’s too calm. He’s always too calm.

Right before Kylo reaches the shore he stops short and swings his lightsaber forward, dragging it through the water in front of him and sending up another giant column of steam that shrouds him, the lake, and Luke--then turns off his lightsaber.

Kylo tries to feel where Luke is in the steam, but Luke can shroud his presence just as well as Kylo can. They can’t simply feel each other out in the steam, but Kylo is young, well-trained, senses honed by hate and vengeance. He can hear the water dripping into the lake off the stalactites, the rustle of the rocks under Luke’s footsteps, the old man’s heavy breathing--

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Luke says from behind him, crystal clear and too close. 

The air pulls away from him on all sides, clearing through the steam, sucking the breath out of his lungs, and Kylo gasps, clawing out with his own power to try to draw the air and cover back to him. But energy bleeds out from his limbs, dragging him down to his knees until he’s hunched over the rocks, struggling for breath to fill the void in his chest, but nothing seems to working even if he can feel the air scratch his throat.

He hears the rocks shift near his hands, sees Luke’s boots from the corner of his eye. Kylo drags himself back, gritting his teeth and ignoring the lead-weight fatigue in his arms, the jagged edges of the gravel digging into his hands through his gloves. If Luke intends on killing him--he can’t die on his back, defenseless--Kylo braces himself on one arm, leans back, raises his lightsaber--

And before he can light it, the hilt jerks out of his hand and flies into Luke’s. Kylo stares, agape, before his shock turns into fury. “That’s mine!” he screams, stretching out his hand. Nothing happens.

Luke looks down at the hilt in his hand, turning it over in his hand as he examines it and stepping back as Kylo makes a desperate lunge forward. From the ground, Kylo sees Luke tuck the lightsaber in his belt, and the disgust alone of seeing that is enough for Kylo to lever himself up -- or try.

The Force pushes him back against the rocks and pins him down. Kylo snarls, straining to turn his own power against Luke’s, but there’s nothing. Not the slippery feeling of it eluding his control, lingering just out of his focus. Not the tingling burn of the Force repelling his intentions. Nothing. His eyes widen, his breathing quickens, cold panic constricting his throat--

“Calm down, Ben,” Luke says softly, kneeling down next to him. “You’re not wounded. There’s nothing to fear.”

“Another lie, _master_ ,” Kylo spits at him, pushing against the Force with his muscles alone. Not only does the sickening clench of failure hit his gut, but also the unpleasant sense of deja vu, of having had this conversation before when he was just as weak and pitiful. Reminding Luke of their shared past, seeing the pain his eyes - it’s small comfort. “What did you do to me?”

“I put a stop to your power.” Luke places a hand on his shoulder. Kylo flinches, tries to pull away - fails. Again. “You might get it back when you’ve calmed down.”

Kylo jerks underneath Luke's hand. “Might? What sort of cruel taunt is that?”

“It’s not a taunt,” Luke assures him, looking up as he hears footsteps racing through the curved tunnel towards them. “This is the first time it’s worked on you; I haven’t had the chance to work on reversing it. Maybe if you came with me I could—”

“You’re despicable,” Kylo snarls, shaking as he fights against Luke’s Force-hold. “Crippling me to see if you can? It’s worse than your usual excuses, uncle; what if you’ve taken it completely, what if I can never—”

“Then you’ll stop terrorizing your mother,” Luke says, and turns away to run after Rey down one side of the fork, while Hux rushes in from the other. As the Force-hold slides off of him, Kylo drags himself back up, foothold sliding in the gravel, and tries to go after him, but his legs give out beneath him, and he collapses to his knees in the rock again just as Hux reaches him.

“Ren! Are you hurt?” Hux asks, breathing hard, one hand holding his blaster pistol and the other sliding over Kylo’s shoulder. His hand feels too heavy, weighing on Kylo’s bones like an iron gauntlet. Kylo recoils from it as he pushes himself up, still shaking - but now from frustration and anger, from the humiliation of Hux and Phasma and the elite guard seeing him like this.

“No,” he forces himself to say, thankful for the mask that hides the grimace of his face, the tears in his eyes, the flush in his cheeks. Hux reaches for him again, and Kylo catches him by the arm, his fingers curling in the gaberwool, and hauls himself to his feet. He shakes, he sways; Hux presses close, allows Kylo to lean on him, and is close enough that Kylo can whisper to him through the filters of his mask: “Get me back to the ship.”

\--

Kylo spends the night alone, wide-awake as he sits in the tattered hammock hung by one of the portholes in his cabin. Even without the bright white glow of hyperspace, he can’t sleep, his nerves alight but his senses blunted. The void where the Force used to press on him, where he could feel the life around him and the cosmic hum of the stars, nags at the back of his mind, because he knows it’s all still there.

Hux had looked askance at this hammock the first time he came to Kylo’s quarters, but never said anything until Kylo had hung it back up after returning from his training with Snoke. “Surely,” he had said, pinching the frayed burlap edges, “I can find you something better to lounge on.”

But then (Kylo didn’t say) how could he remember the earthy, bitter scent of soaring redwoods, the endless dance of diffuse sunlight through fog on durasteel hangars blanketed in vines, the shrill symphonies of crickets broken by the deep warbling of a night-bird, or perhaps an Ewok trying to lure one.

How, indeed, could he hold onto the memory of lying on this hammock where he had strung it up in the abandoned control tower, a hundred meters in the air and still seeing nothing but the outskirts of the old Imperial base and more canopy, feeling the life of the forest just as he had been taught, when Luke had emerged from the staircase, wrapped in a black cloak and wearing a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Ben,” he had said with that familiar softness (that now still tugs at Kylo’s frustration), “what are you doing here?”

Keeping you safe, he would have said if he had the courage, but as a boy he had shrugged and made it a point not to look at Luke and instead focus on the way the gas giant started to swing into view from the eastern horizon. 

“We need to talk about your powers,” Luke had continued as he approached, moving around the perimeter of the circular room, until he came to the support beam holding up the hammock at Kylo’s--Ben’s--feet, curling his gloved hand around the steel. “And about your grandfather.”

Anakin? The boy had asked, and Luke had tipped his head slightly, looking away for a moment in thought.

“Anakin and Vader. There’s something important you have to know about him.” And that boy that Kylo had been had always been so eager for those stories and every word of the adventurous past Uncle Luke could give him, he had rolled right out of the hammock to his feet and dropped his unfinished saber on the ground, where it skidded across the metal grate. 

Kylo still has dreams of watching Luke pick up that facsimile of an ancient hilt, the crossguards newly welded to the metal just that afternoon, and the strange searching gaze Luke turned on him, as if he could see every thought and emotion that had crossed through that boy’s existence since the day of his birth. Considering what Kylo knows now about his own capabilities, the possibility still stands, and it sickens him to know how easy it must have been. 

In the present, he leans out of the hammock to his feet, turns his back to the porthole and walks into the study, pushing out of his memories the wide-eyed hope that boy had nursed when he had asked his master of that work-in-progress, do you like it?

\--

He prowls the ship in a foul mood, staying away from everyone as best he can, until Hux asks him to drop by that evening. Kylo doesn’t wait for pleasantries or conversation, afraid that all of his worries and concerns will spill out of him, so he pins Hux against the bed and fucks him--mouth, fingers, cock--until Hux, exhausted, sleeps first.

\--

“I’m going to contact Leader Snoke to give him my report,” Kylo says in the morning. Hux makes a noncommittal noise of acknowledgement as he stands in front of the bedroom mirror and cinches his belt around his waist.

Several hours later--after some fitful meditation, a light breakfast, nervous pacing, hesitation, two frightening incidents when he had nearly walked into a trooper when he couldn’t sense them around the corner--he kneels on the projection pad in their best comms room, facing the blue-tinted hologram of his master’s face. 

“Kylo,” Snoke says, voice flat and expectant.

“Master,” Kylo greets him, and he notices how his voice is already wavering. He bows his head. “I fought Skywalker and his padawan on Dan-Chi yesterday.”

“But you do not have him.”

“I do not,” Kylo confirms, keeping his head bowed. “He escaped with the holocron and--” Kylo swallows. “He did something to me that I do not fully understand...I cannot feel the Force.”

Silence. Kylo doesn’t dare break it, but he turns over a thousand possibilities of what Snoke might say, whether he’ll be angry or calm or derisive, best and worst case scenarios and everything in between. It’s nothing he hasn’t already thought of in the hours and minutes and seconds leading up to this meeting, but it still leaves his heart thumping hard in his chest and his hand fisted tight at his side.

“He finally took your power,” Snoke says, ever calm and not the least bit surprised, “your sensitivity.” 

“Yes, that is what I believe,” Kylo says with a slight nod, and swallows back the caustic burn of failure (he’s finally done it). “Is there anything you can do, Master?”

Snoke makes a thoughtful sound, a deep rumble that’s almost a comfort, even through the speakers of the holoprojection room. “I have experimented with this severing technique before,” he muses. Kylo suspects that he knew those experimental subjects, barely-Jedi’s and once-padawans who had enjoyed a few years of safe anonymity before Kylo and his knights had found them on the outer reaches of the galaxy. “With time, I may be able to reverse the effect.”

Hope flickers, naive, in the pit of Kylo’s stomach. “Should I come to you now?”

“Do not presume I will give you my help, Kylo,” Snoke warns; Kylo flinches at the firm tone. “Simply because I may does not mean I will. You have allowed this weakness to befall you, and now you will find a path to overcome it.”

Kylo’s head snaps up as the despair sinks in. He stares, wide-eyed, at the hologram of his master’s twisted face. “But Master—”

“Are you arguing my decision?”

“No,” Kylo says quickly, “you are wise, and I am humbled to be your apprentice, but how can I serve you if I am rendered so useless—”

“Kylo Ren!” Snoke’s voice booms through the speakers all around him, but just like every other emotion of every person around him, Kylo can’t feel the anger as well as before. The void emboldens him.

He lurches to his feet, standing with his hands fisted at his side, “How can I extend your will throughout the galaxy if I can’t exert my own here among these Force-blind servants of yours? You told me to dominate their will but how can I so much as challenge them if I am as weak as—” Blunt, white-hot pain slams into the back of his mind and he crumples to ground, screaming. It’s not the first time he’s felt this, it’s not the last, but he never expects it and he never learns how to ignore how the pain surges down his spine, spreads out to his nerves, then doubles back to crowd out his thoughts with a single, desperate wish for this to end, so he can go back to being good, obedient, favored.

It stops. 

His muscles twitch. He hears his own ragged breathing against the steel floor of the projection pad, his heart pounding in his ears, then the hum of the ship. When he opens his eyes, he sees the blue glow of the hologram still on the floor in front of him; his master hasn’t left him yet. That’s enough to motivate his aching limbs to move, dragging himself up to his knees, slowly sitting back on his heels and tilting his head up at the towering projection in front of him. 

“Thank you, Master,” he croaks, voice hoarse. “...I was weak.”

“Yes, I know your weaknesses, Kylo Ren.” Snoke says, his voice gentler. Kylo hates that kindness more; his face flushes as cold twists in his gut. “And I know that you want your power returned to you. But your vulnerability to Skywalker has led to your impotence; what would you learn if I returned your power to you now?”

“Nothing,” Kylo says, resenting the truth in his master’s words; if it were anyone else he would have used all his power to try to kill Luke, maybe so far as to bring the entire cave down around them, but their history, that lingering fondness, hindered his approach--and look what Luke did to him this time.

“Precisely. You will find your own power, you will overcome this weakness, or else I do not have any use for you as an apprentice. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.” Kylo can’t say anything else; the protests lodge in his throat as the pain continues to fade, reminding him where his stubborn mouth can get him.

“Good. Is there anything else you wish to tell me?”

Kylo shakes his head rather than tell Snoke about the kindness with which Luke had looked at him, the softness of his voice; neither does he tell Snoke about Hux’s ignorance about this. “No, Master. I will—I will contact you again when I have recovered.”

The holoprojection flickers and disappears. The light on the far wall blinks from green to red, and the auxillary lights grow to standard conference-room luminosity. Kylo takes a breath, still feeling his heart beating hard, and pulls himself to his feet.

Another breath, hearing the hum of the ship but feeling none of its power, none of the life of the crew, none of the distant chill of space just outside the walls. Nothing.

Kylo grabs his lightsaber from his belt, his fingers tight around the hilt as it ignites at his side, first the blade--a beat--and then the quillons, the energy churning along the blade like his own agitation. No help from Snoke (his saber cleaves the empty chair at the console)—

He can’t tell Hux (the panel sparks as plasma rips through metal and wires)—

If his Knights ever found out he’d been rendered weak, that his connection with Vader was broken (displays melt in an ooze of crystal and transparisteel and alarms blare overhead)—

Will he ever be able to speak to his grandfather again—

“REN,” Hux calls his name from across the room. Kylo stops, breathing hard and tasting the smoke on his tongue. The console controlling the holoprojector sits in a smoldering heap of its own rubble, the scorch marks reaching high along the wall, but stop just under a red siren that circles round and round, flashing him with a bright red glow. 

Hux stands by the door, his brow furrowed and his eyes dark with fury. “Stand down.” 

Kylo tightens his grip on his lightsaber. “No.”

“Ren.” Hux steps towards him—one, two.

“Leave me be.” Kylo turns his back to Hux.

“I’ve done enough of that.” Three more footsteps click against the floor, closer and closer. Kylo grits his teeths (why can’t he be left alone), and spins on his heel, ready to yell something else.

But Hux stands there with his arm out, holding one of the saber hilts Kylo had given him weeks ago, this thumb poised over the switch. Kylo can’t take his eyes off of it. His throat is dry. _You wouldn’t,_ he wants to shout, but he can’t, because Hux stands ready to ignite a lightsaber against him, and Kylo can’t feel whether he’s going to or not.

“You said you fought for me,” Hux says, voice barely louder than the crackling din of Kylo’s lightsaber or the shorting of the wires in the console. “Would you do it again?”

“I would,” he answers without pause.

“Then fight yourself and stand down. Drop your saber. Surrender to me.” 

“Hux—”

“Surrender.”

Kylo stares at him. Hux’s fingers tighten around the hilt, his arm stiff and straight. Kylo swallows hard, looks down at the jittering red plasma blade in his hand. He takes a deep breath, then tosses it aside; the blade recedes before the pommel hits the floor with a heavy thud.

That’s enough to make Hux relax his arm, bringing his own saber to his side where he clips it back onto his belt (and Kylo feels a thrill of pride). Then he steps towards Kylo, boots clicking on the smooth floor, and says, “On your knees.”

Normally, Hux only says this in the privacy of their cabins, only when the lights are low and Kylo feels so frayed at the edges of his mind that he welcomes simple orders and simple objectives. Hux will be at his back, nude body pressed flush against Kylo’s skin, or maybe across the room sitting in his full dress uniform.

The words strike the same chord: a wordless trust that felt like the Force, but was his to give, like the lightsaber Hux has now. It’s all that he has, now that he’s numb to the Force and set adrift by his master, so Kylo sinks to his knees, his eyes on Hux’s face as he comes closer.

Hux stops in front of him and reaches out to brush his thumb over Kylo’s cheek, the leather warm and soft against his skin. Kylo raises a hand out of instinct, his fingers brushing the outer seam of Hux’s trousers until a brief, stinging slap to his cheek makes him drop his hand. “No touching unless I allow it, is that clear?” Hux asks, and Kylo nods slowly. “Good.” Fingers slide along his jaw, palm cupping his face; it wouldn’t matter if he had the Force now, all his senses attuned to the touch of Hux’s glove, the smell of the leather, the sound of his voice. 

“I told you to disable all of the feeds if you wanted a truly private discussion with the Supreme Leader,” Hux says softly, “but you never listen.” Kylo turns his head to look away but Hux’s hand slides into his hair, tightens and holds. “Is your power gone? All of it?”

This question has plagued him for days, ever since he slipped through hard gravel with Luke’s power receding away from him, and he can still only muster a barely-breathed, “Yes.”

Hux sighs. His grip loosens; he cards his fingers through Kylo’s thick hair. “And you still managed to destroy this room...what am I going to do with you,” he says with an odd timbre that Kylo doesn’t recognize: it’s not his regular affection, or disappointment, or irritation. “What did you plan to do now?”

Kylo blinks up at him. “Now?”

“Now that you’re a powerless wretch on my star destroyer.”

“I…” Kylo watches Hux face as he tries to grasp for an idea, a shred of a strategy, but he just wants to run, take his ship and flee to the edge of the galaxy where he can be a man in a mask (a smuggler, is that what he’s reduced to, he's done it before, he could do it again). “I don’t…”

“You don’t have a clue,” Hux says cooly, his face still calm. His thumb rubs against Kylo’s temple. “And you’re going to tear up my ship until you find some direction. Aren’t you?”

“No, this was only—”

“The last time you’ll destroy my ship,” Hux turns his head slightly to yell over his shoulder, “Phasma, could you assist me with Lord Ren?”

\--

Hux’s hand at the small of his back kept him calm until the lift opened up onto the floor shared by sickbay and the reconditioning wing. The hallway is lined with twenty troopers sporting silver pauldrons, Phasma’s best who swear their loyalty directly to her and Hux. They’re too much for him to overpower, not in his weakened state. 

“Don’t fight this, Ren,” Hux orders, right before Kylo’s fist connects with a trooper’s jaw.

 

The metal cuffs hold his arms high over his head, stretching his body taut until his heels lift off the rough, grated floor, and the clammy chill of the room wraps around every inch of skin. The only light of the room blinds him from above, forming a perfect circle around his feet until Hux steps close, stares into Kylo’s eyes as he presses a blunt, two-pronged silver probe right underneath Kylo’s ribs. “What can you give me? What can you give the First Order?” he asks quietly.

Kylo’s breath catches, stretching his torso even further. He whispers, “I don’t know,” and the electricity flows straight into his diaphragm. 

 

Between his screams and struggles for breath, Kylo feels his world narrow down to two things: pain and the absence of it. His muscles pull and contort to Hux’s touch until Hux pauses, takes a vibroblade to the skin of Kylo’s back in a slow, meandering cut. The sharp burn of it sinks to his core like a hot drink, such a relief that Kylo hears himself groaning, even as he feels droplets of blood roll down his skin. 

“Still a glutton for pain and suffering, I see,” Hux says as he tips a cup of cold water to Kylo’s lips; some of it reaches his parched throat while the rest trickles down his chin and neck and chest, raising shivers up his spine. “Though I wonder what good it does your training, now.”

 

The pain gives him focus; it is the most attention he’s given anything since Luke took his powers. He watches Hux; he closes his eyes and swallows whole the pain of the probe, or the knife, or the stinging freeze of the regenerator sealing his wounds, or the friction of leather on his neck as Hux squeezes tighter and tighter. 

“What if I kept you here? A mere canvas for my frustration?” Hux asks. Kylo stares back at him, lips parted as he gasps for breath. He can’t say no; he doesn’t know if he wants to.

Hux releases him. For half a minute, Hux leaves him alone in his cylinder of light; Kylo gulps down one breath, two, his chin to his chest. His shoulders ache. His lungs are tight. His calves tremble. 

The sound of a saber igniting; Kylo’s head snaps up to see the teal blade of a lightsaber glowing in the darkness, bright enough to cast shadows on Hux’s face, who watches him. They stare at each other for too long, nothing but Kylo’s labored breathing between them, and then Hux says in a distant voice: “I could kill you now, if I wanted to.”

Kylo swallows hard. His heart doesn’t beat any harder than it already was. “Not if your technique is still as awful as before,” he says, his voice ragged in his ears. Hux snorts, and then he step forward. The hum of the blade grows as his form breaks into the spotlight, and Kylo tenses as he imagines the heat of it, how it could cleave off his arm right then. 

“I doubt my technique would hurt me here.” Hux reaches out and grasps Kylo’s chin. “What would you do if I released you?”

The same question Kylo hates, and focusing on pain, fear, anticipation hasn’t helped his answer. “I don’t know.” 

“Men without purpose wither and die,” Hux whispers, his grip bruising and tight on Kylo’s chin. “I have seen it many times, among men stronger than you. I have seen them turn into husks of their former glory, grey haired and feeble as they collect their ration of bread and water. And I swear, Kylo Ren, that I will not allow you the same fate. I will put your soul to work, whether it is destroying my enemies or smuggling my secrets or warming my bed between cycles. You will not sit idle.”

Kylo lets out a choked laugh. “Boredom will kill me,” he deadpans, half a question.

“It can,” Hux says, his face still calm and passive. “Perhaps that’s how Skywalker intends to destroy you and open up the Order for attack.” 

Kylo jerks at the cuffs over his head, lunges with a shout for Hux who steps back and widens his eyes, but the fixture above has no give; he stays where he is, breathing hard and flushed because of his rage. “He won’t destroy me,” Kylo snaps, voice cracking, “You can kill me a thousand times before that old Jedi would ever get the chance to kill me--to kill you--to even _look_ at you--”

“Ren,” Hux sighs, shutting off the lightsaber, but Kylo continues.

“—I would tear him apart with my bare hands, Force be damned—”

“Ren,” Hux says again, louder. He drops the hilt of the lightsaber on the ground with a clatter, and then cups Kylo’s face, the leather warm on Kylo’s cheeks. “I believe you, of course.” He places a soft kiss at the corner of Kylo’s chapped lips. “Did you see what happened? You pushed me.”

The words don’t register. Kylo blinks. “I pushed you?”

“Not very much, but I think we’ve played long enough for me to recognize your power.” A smirk tugs at the corner of Hux’s mouth, satisfied. He pats Kylo's cheek, and Kylo feels grounded for the first time in days. “Maybe you _can_ be half-useful again. Though I doubt this is the best way to spur your power.” 

Hux signals something over Kylo’s shoulder and the fixture holding his arms up starts to lower. Kylo groans as his shoulders rotate and his arms relax, and when he sways on his feet Hux loops an arm around him and allows Kylo to bury his face in Hux’s shoulder. He breathes deep, focusing on the comforting scents of pine and leather and the warmth of Hux’s body against his. As much as he enjoys the relief, Kylo agrees: this isn't the best way to wrench back his control of the Force. If all of that pain had only spurred a little push, his former wealth of power would require his death three times over, or another lifetime of work. He doesn't have time for another twenty years of training.

“I have an idea,” Kylo murmurs.

“Is it learning how to shoot better so you can compensate for this?”

“No.” Kylo straightens up on his feet - or tries. Hux’s arm tightens around him. “I'll find Skywalker and have him remedy this.”

“How do you know he won't take the rest of you?”

“I’ll bring you and your pistol.”

“And you believe that will do something? Even I have heard the stories about Skywalker, Ren.”

“Gentlemen,” Phasma interrupts from the darkness; Kylo tenses, wondering how long she’s been just out of his sight. “Neither of you are going anywhere without a protection detail. Especially against a Jedi.” 

Kylo clears his throat, hoping he can muster the command in his voice after hours and hours under Hux’s hand. “Well then, Captain, you’ll have to arrange your best troops. Preferably some that won’t betray us to the enemy.”

Hux digs a thumb into his kidney, and Kylo makes a strangled sound, twisting to get away from it and swaying on his feet again. “We can discuss particulars tomorrow, Phasma,” Hux says, “and let us remember that Lord Ren is not quite disposable just yet.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [tumblr](http://cutequirk.tumblr.com/).


End file.
